Category Archives: Data Center Patents

(10/31/2013 – Mountain View, California) – Close examination of Google’s data center construction related purchases has revealed the procurement of large scale deep earth mining equipment. While the actual need for the deep mining gear is unclear, many speculate that it has to do with a secretive internal project that has come to light known only as Project: Rabbit Ears.

According to sources not at all familiar with Google technology infrastructure strategy, Project Rabbit ears is the natural outgrowth of Google’ desire to provide ubiquitous infrastructure world wide. On the surface, these efforts seem consistent with other incorrectly speculated projects such as Project Loon, Google’s attempt to provide Internet services to residents in the upper atmosphere through the use of high altitude balloons, and a project that has only recently become visible and the source of much public debate – known as ‘Project Floating Herring’, where apparently a significantly sized floating barge with modular container-based data centers sitting in the San Francisco Bay has been spied.

“You will notice there is no power or network infrastructure going to any of those data center shipping containers,” said John Knownothing, chief Engineer at Dubious Lee Technical Engineering Credibility Corp. “That’s because they have mastered wireless electrical transfer at the large multi-megawatt scale.”

Real Estate rates in the Bay Area have increased almost exponentially over the last ten years making the construction of large scale data center facilities an expensive endeavor. During the same period, The Port of San Francisco has unfortunately seen a steady decline of its import export trade. After a deep analysis it was discovered that docking fees in the Port of San Francisco are considerably undervalued and will provide Google with an incredibly cheap real estate option in one of the most expensive markets in the world.

It will also allow them to expand their use of renewable energy through the use of tidal power generation built directly into the barges hull. “They may be able to collect as much as 30 kilowatts of power sitting on the top of the water like that”, continues Knownothing, “and while none of that technology is actually visible, possible, or exists, we are certain that Google has it.”

While the technical intricacies of the project fascinate many, the initiative does have its critics like Compass Data Center CEO, Chris Crosby, who laments the potential social aspects of this approach, “Life at sea can be lonely, and no one wants to think about what might happen when a bunch of drunken data center engineers hit port.” Additionally, Crosby mentions the potential for a backslide of human rights violations, “I think we can all agree that the prospect of being flogged or keel hauled really narrows down the possibility for those outage causing human errors. Of course, this sterner level of discipline does open up the possibility of mutiny.”

However, the public launch of Project Floating Herring will certainly need to await the delivery of the more shrouded Project Rabbit Ears for various reasons. Most specifically the primary reason for the development of this technology is so that Google can ultimately drive the floating facility out past twelve miles into International waters where it can then dodge all national, regional, and local taxation, the safe harbor and privacy legislation of any country or national entity on the planet that would use its services. In order to realize that vision, in the current network paradigm, Google would need exceedingly long network cables to attach to Network Access Points and Carrier Connection points as the facilities drive through international waters.

This is where Project Rabbit Ears becomes critical to the Google Strategy. Making use of the deep earth mining equipment, Google will be able to drill deep into the Earths crust, into the mantle, and ultimately build a large Network Access Point near the Earth’s core. This Planetary WIFI solution will be centrally located to cover the entire earth without the use of regional WIFI repeaters. Google’s floating facilities could then gain access to unlimited bandwidth and provide yet another consumer based monetization strategy for the company.

Knownothing also speculates that such a move would allow Google to make use of enormous amounts of free geo-thermic power and almost singlehandedly become the greenest power user on the planet. Speculation also abounds that Google could then sell that power through its as yet un-invented large scale multi-megawatt wireless power transfer technology as unseen on its floating data centers.

Much of the discussion around this kind of technology innovation driven by Google has been given credible amounts of veracity and discussed by many seemingly intelligent technology based news outlets and industry organizations who should intellectually know better, but prefer not to acknowledge the inconvenient lack of evidence.

\Mm

Editors Note: I have many close friends in the Google Infrastructure organization and firmly believe that they are doing some amazing, incredible work in moving the industry along especially solving problems at scale. What I find simply amazing is in the search for innovation how often our industry creates things that may or may not be there and convince ourselves so firmly that it exists.

Yahoo may have just sent a cold chill across the data center industry at large and begun a stifling of data center innovation. In a May 3, 2012 article, Forbes did a quick and dirty analysis on the patent wars between Facebook and Yahoo. It’s a quick read but shines an interesting light on the potential impact something like this can have across the industry. The article, found here, highlights that :

In a new disclosure, Facebook added in the latest version of the filing that on April 23 Yahoo sent a letter to Facebook indicating that Yahoo believes it holds 16 patents that “may be relevant” to open source technology Yahoo asserts is being used in Facebook’s data centers and servers.

While these types of patent infringement cases happen all the time in the Corporate world, this one could have far greater ramifications on an industry that has only recently emerged into the light of sharing of ideas. While details remain sketchy at the time of this writing, its clear that the specific call out of data center and servers is an allusion to more than just server technology or applications running in their facilities. In fact, there is a specific call out of data centers and infrastructure.

With this revelation one has to wonder about its impact on the Open Compute Project which is being led by Facebook. It leads to some interesting questions. Has their effort to be more open in their designs and approaches to data center operations and design led them to a position of risk and exposure legally? Will this open the flood gates for design firms to become more aggressive around functionality designed into their buildings? Could companies use their patents to freeze competitors out of colocation facilities in certain markets by threatening colo providers with these types of lawsuits? Perhaps I am reaching a bit but I never underestimate litigious fervor once the proverbial blood gets in the water.

In my own estimation, there is a ton of “prior art”, to use an intellectual property term, out there to settle this down long term, but the question remains – will firms go through that lengthy process to prove it out or opt to re-enter their shells of secrecy?

After almost a decade of fighting to open up the collective industry to share technologies, designs, and techniques this is a very disheartening move. The general Glasnost that has descended over the industry has led to real and material change for the industry.

We have seen the mental shift of companies move from measuring facilities purely around “Up Time” measurements to one that is primarily more focused around efficiency as well. We have seen more willingness to share best practices and find like minded firms to share in innovation. One has to wonder, will this impact the larger “greening” of data centers in general. Without that kind of pressure – will people move back to what is comfortable?

Time will certainly tell. I was going to make a joke about the fact that until time proves out I may have to “lawyer” up just to be safe. Its not really a joke however because I’m going to bet other firms do something similar and that, my dear friends, is how the innovation will start to freeze.

It has been a bit more than 2 months since I made a post on my beloved Loosebolts blog. To my active and loyal readers, a sincere apology from me personally. As many of you know I recently took a new role with Nokia running their global service operations. Its been an amazing experience and there are a lot of really great things going on there that I am sure will come to light in the weeks and months to come. Unfortunately, for a new person coming in, there is a lot of stuff to do. Learn the company, learn the culture, learn your organization, figure out what is right, figure out what you might want to improve upon, and generally start over. I am now starting to come up for air and have more time to reflect on many of the things I see in the industry at large and get back to being my normal ornery self.

To prove it I posted a link to some of my data center patents in the ABOUT Page here on the site. There are a few more going through the process right now but adding a link shows intent doesn’t it? :)